EDITED BY PAOLA BERGAMINI

BELO HORIZONTE
Good and Sure Guidance
Dearest Father Giussani: I entrust these lines to dear Rosetta, to remind you that we have you always in our thoughts here and we pray to the Lord for you, for your mission, now even more meaningful than ever, for all of us who love you, trying always to put into practice what we have learned from you and are always learning–because one never stops learning! Old age is certainly a time of enormous verification of the value and truth of what has been transmitted to us before, and of new, unimagined, surprising discoveries, connected with our new situation, in which our abandon and God’s mercy design absolutely new panoramas of life, full of consolation and hope. Thanks be to God, we have been granted your good and sure guidance also in this most decisive section of our journey. May the Lord comfort and sustain you always.
Pigi

FLORENCE
Put out into Deep Water
We reprint here the letter that Cardinal Piovanelli sent to Fr. Giovanni Paccosi, a priest in the Movement who is from the diocese of Florence and is now a Fidei Donum missionary in Peru
February 20, 2001
Dearest Father Giovanni: Last February 12th, I remembered you with the friends who are priests in CL on the occasion of our thanksgiving for the 19th anniversary of the Church’s recognition of the Fraternity. We prayed for you. We felt that you were here with us. I am glad that you have put out into deep water and that, from your place on the open sea, you say to our Church in Florence: you must pull away from the shore and not be afraid to open your sails to the wind of the Spirit. It is certain, absolutely certain, that Jesus is in your boat. If sometimes it may seem to you that He is asleep, have no fear: His heart is always vigilant! It may be that you have to throw out your nets many times and that they appear empty to you, but never fear, because it is the awareness of our nothingness (useless servants!) that calls and manifests the marvelous works of God. You, in your fishing, do as Simon did in the miraculous catch of fish in Luke’s story (5:7): he called his friends in the other boat to come help him. Call us, so that we may help you! In the meantime, give my best greetings to everyone, especially Bishop Panizza. Good luck with your work in the parish and also as you start at the university. A warm embrace from all your acquaintances and friends, and a great big blessing for you and your people from me.
Silvano Cardinal Piovanelli, Archbishop

CASTIGLIONE OLONA
A Question of Reason
Dear friends: I am a doctor, a specialist in infectious diseases, and for some years now I have been working with AIDS. Recently, I participated in a required training course on palliative treatments. The title of the lesson was, “End of Life Care.” The speaker, one of the leading national experts on palliative therapy, began by offering a series of arguments against prolonging therapy in hopeless cases of terminally ill patients. Many of his points were well taken and could be shared by all. At a certain point in his talk, he introduced a new line of reasoning: “Some time back, in a nephrology division, a woman asked to interrupt dialysis because she was tired of depending on a machine. The chief of the division, who belonged to Communion and Liberation, wanted to impede her decision. Another doctor in the division put the matter to a judge, who ordered the division chief to respect the patient’s will. The woman died a few days later.” At this point I spoke up, saying that it seemed to me that the starting premises had been changed, and that the cards on the table had been improperly mixed up, lumping together incurable terminal illnesses with pathologies which could not be cured but could be treated. I then posed the question: “Suppose that you had to treat a person with a serious case of pneumonia. The patient is suffering badly, he has had trouble breathing for some days, he is tired of suffering, and he refuses treatment. The illness is serious, but can be cured with the proper course of antibiotics. What would you do in this case?” He answered that the most correct attitude would be to respect the patient’s will, letting him die. I spoke up again, saying that this seemed unreasonable to me, in that we are doctors first and foremost in order to affirm life; and secondly, I have been taught a use of reason that takes into consideration all the factors in play: when a person is suffering, pain affects his will to an inordinate degree. My observations aroused the reaction of some of my colleagues. One in particular accused me of maintaining a violent position. The speaker also came into the debate, saying that my way of arguing was unfair and irrational because it was the fruit of an emotional attitude: “It is obvious that faced with a person who is suffering we would want to do something, but we must be professional!” At the end of the session, I went up to the speaker to talk to him. “My way of reasoning is not the fruit of emotion,” I said, “but of the recognition that life is valuable. It is the patient who, in his suffering state, is inevitably influenced by his own emotions.” He replied by offering me an example: “You take this position because you are allowing your emotions to become involved with the patient. It is like marriage; they should all be annulled. When you get married, you’re in love and this does not allow you to know the person you have by your side.” I replied that the exact opposite is true–it is not possible to know something or someone if you have no affectionate attachment to them, and while I was saying this I began to suspect that there no longer exists a common human experience to which we can all refer.
Paolo

PERUGIA
The Hike that is Life
We publish here the last letter from Giorgio, a CLU boy who died last November 17th
My name is Giorgio and I am a statistics student in Perugia. I would like to tell you about my experience, which came to a head during the vacation at Livigno, from which I have just recently returned. In brief, what happened is this: we set out for the second hike, I was already hungry when we started, and I was really looking forward to getting there so we could eat, sing some songs, and go back to the hotel. Two hours passed, and the goal was not in sight. Another half hour, still nothing. Yet another half hour, and still nothing. I continued to walk in the hope that in a few more minutes I would see all of the group sitting down resting. Instead, turning the corner, I saw the first group (I was among the last), far off and tiny in the distance; there were still another couple of miles to go. This walk was already becoming a real drama because of my hunger, but at that point it became a tragedy because of my exhaustion. At that very moment, I noticed a boy in front of me, Alessio, a geology student. Every step he took, he would stop to pick up a rock and break it with his hammer. He was so passionate about his geology studies that he was trying to learn more even on a walk, analyzing the stones he came across. In the face of a passion like this for the reality around him, I was astounded, and I grabbed onto that person, and watching him for the whole time, I finally reached the destination. And right then, I understood why Father Giussani says that hiking is the handiest educative tool: it is an analogy for life. That walk was the analogy of my life par excellence. From a certain point onwards, the walk had become tragic for me, but I managed to reach the top by grabbing hold of the passion Alessio felt for rocks, for his study of his reality. My life, too, has become tragic from a certain point onwards, ever since last year when I discovered I had a malignant tumor in my spine. And now I have understood that to reach the top, I have to grab hold of these same gazes, these gazes whose eyes shine with the light of an encounter with Christ, which came about through another encounter, with Father Giussani and the Movement. The only way, not only to survive but to live, is to follow these persons. “Now I know that His love is great, that He will love me forever, that He will follow me on every path I take; and the Lord will be light for my eyes, the Lord will assure me that toil and pain are not hopeless, and for this reason I will follow Him.” I will follow Him through the experience of Father Giussani and, more particularly, through these friend in whose eyes I see the light of an encounter. And thus I know that in this tragedy there is something that will never leave me, and I must not be afraid. I have understood that “dragging all my thoughts into the illusion of what I would like” will not lead me anywhere, because alone, “with my own hands I will never be able to do justice.” A few months ago we went to Trivolzio to ask St. Riccardo for a miracle. I understood that St. Riccardo gave me my miracle three years ago, when I encountered the Movement. When I was kneeling there in front of St. Riccardo, I asked him to give me the faith and courage to live like a hero, because whoever “has a good heart is not afraid of anything, he is happy with everything and only wants to love.” And so the road becomes beautiful, wherever it may lead.
Giorgio

Leopardi in Taiwan
Recently in Taipei, Taiwan, at Fu Jen Catholic University, a group meeting was held on a theme from the poet Giacamo Leopardi’s line: “If happiness does not exist, then what is life? We accept life because we yearn for happiness.” Thus, Lia and Giovanna, two young Taiwanese girls, told their friends about their encounter with CL and their experience of these past few years at the university
What struck me most was the friendship that I have seen. For example, when I was in Italy during my third year of university, I once said to my friends that I had to write a report for school, but I didn’t know how to go about it. In concrete terms, I had not asked for any help. But they, every day when they saw me, would ask me if I needed a hand, and one person in particular started explaining to me how to do this report. What seemed strange to me was that I had only just met her, and here she was willing to help me. Another time, as I was getting ready to go back to Taiwan, I told a friend that I wanted to sell my moped. Three days later, he called to tell me that he had put up an advertisement for the moped at his school and had started asking around among his friends to see if anyone was interested. In the end, even if nobody bought the moped, I was truly moved by his gesture. I shall end by saying that among us, friendship is more beautiful and true. There exists a love among us. This love cannot be replaced or bought.
Lia

I am very glad to be able to come back to my university and see all of you. I never thought that one day I would have been able to come back here, to share with you my experience of these four years of university. I know that many students are afraid of the future and don’t have a good idea of what they will be able to do after studying Italian. But Something has changed my life and made me happier and more confident about my future. This evening I would like to tell you about what changed my life. I’ll start with my first year of university. I was like all first-year students, full of energy and hope for the future. But my faculty was the first faculty of Italian language in Taiwan, and no one knew about it. We were lucky: the relationship between students and professors in my faculty was good, and so I was not afraid to approach them. Maurizio and Isabella were two of my professors. One day, as I was walking through the university, Isabella stopped me and invited me to go with her and some of her friends to a pub over the weekend. I simply said, “Yes.” Through Isabella, I met Chiara Piccinini and other friends in the Movement. I began simply to have a relationship with them. Every week we met together at the university. Sometimes we watched movies, sometimes we listened to music and read newspaper articles, or simply talked about how our day went. Maybe you think these are normal things, but they really struck me. Usually after watching the film, we would talk about what struck us and why. They would talk so openly about what they thought, and instead I never knew what to say. Not that I didn’t like it; simply, I never wondered what in particular had affected me and why. I began asking questions and finding answers. My third year of university, I went to Italy on a cultural exchange program. Thus I was able to meet friends in CLU [the group of CL university students]. They helped me enormously during that year. I went to the CLU retreat with my friends from Bologna, and seeing the friendship they shared, I was moved. It was a pure friendship, which I had never had and that I wanted for myself. During my last year of university, which was a hard year, when everyone starts thinking about finding work afterwards, I had three part-time jobs and on top of that I had to study. Andrea and Cecilia asked me to hold the “ray” at the university. In the beginning I was going to say, “No,” because I had so much to do and was tired. But one day Andrea said to me, “You do so many things at the same time, but have you ever thought about yourself for a minute?” This affected me deeply; I spent so much time living like a robot without even realizing it. I had never thought about what I was doing and why I was doing it. That same evening I called Andrea to tell him “Yes.” This is how the ray got started at the university. Despite the fact that I was very busy, I knew the reason I was doing it, and I was happy.
Giovanna

Newlyweds
Last December 30th, my husband and I had an audience with the Pope. We had always wanted to meet him in person, but we did not think it would be possible except in one of those audiences where in the end you just wave to him from far away. Instead, we were wrong; our marriage enabled us to do it. We were married last July, and some of our friends told us about an audience that the Holy Father holds every Wednesday for newlyweds. Making a request to participate was a very simple matter–we sent a fax and then telephoned for confirmation. Taking advantage of Christmas vacation, we went to Rome with some other “freshly married” friends to take part in the audience. It was an occasion that we will never forget. We were in the area in front of St. Peter’s, some thirty couples from different countries. A master of ceremonies came to get us and escorted us up to the Pope. Stefano and I were the first in line. As soon as he saw us arriving, when we were still quite distant, he smiled at us and held out his arms, as though he wanted to embrace us all. We climbed the steps, and despite all the instructions we had received from those in charge, who had insisted we only kiss his ring and greet him briefly, we told him about the affection and filial devotion that bind us to him, as taught and witnessed to us by Father Giussani. We told him we belonged to the movement of CL, conscious of the affection he has for all of us. Then I told him we were expecting a baby and asked him to bless the three of us. He took my face in his hands, visibly moved, caressed me, and said, “Good for you!” and then he blessed us. It is absolutely true what Father Giussani says about fatherhood; I had never felt looked at like this before. We thanked him for this paternity with which he accompanies us in our life and our calling; we thanked him for the enthusiasm and faithfulness with which he gives every instant to Christ, and we asked him to pray that this enthusiasm and faithfulness never be lacking in our family as well. At this point one of the masters of ceremonies insisted that we come away, so much so that in our hurry I almost forgot about a letter we had written the evening before and that I was keeping hidden in my veil to give to the Pope directly. I managed to give it to him before we stepped away.
Daniela and Stefano, Milan

Catechumens
Dearest Father Giussani: Last Wednesday the entire community of San Benedetto gathered around Abjol, Ermal, and Stela for the rite of admission to the catechumenate, celebrated by our Bishop, Most Reverend Gervasio Gestori, in which our friends confirmed their intention to receive the sacraments. Abjol, Ermal, and Stela, along with Andi and Barjon, are Albanians and are fourth-year high school students at the IPSIA, where I teach physics. Last year, I invited them to take part in the GS [high school CL group] students’ carnival party. This was the beginning of a beautiful story that has led three of them to the important decision to belong to Christ. But, before this, many changes took place in their lives. This summer, for example, when school was out, they did not return home to Albania as usual, but found jobs and, guests of families in the Movement, they stayed with us until the beginning of August so as to be able to go on the GS vacation. Ermal, Barjon, and Andi gave up their plans to change schools and move to a different city in order to remain here with us. They rented an apartment, together with Abjol, where they live so as to be freer to follow the gestures of the community. When the three Albanian kids told us about their intention to receive the sacraments, we talked about it with our Bishop, who showed great joy and enthusiasm at the news, saying he would like to be able to celebrate the sacraments at the Easter Vigil. What amazed us was the trust he placed in us. He asked us to involve the GS students in the preparation and spiritual development of these young people in the basic steps of the catechumenate, so that it would be a people who welcomed and educated them in the faith. In his homily, the Bishop compared the Albanian kids to St. Augustine: like the Saint, unhappy with his life and in search of something that satisfied him completely, he had left his homeland and come to Italy. So too had they left their home without knowing what awaited them. He went on to say that in Milan, St. Augustine had been struck by the Bishop’s words and encountered people who lived their brotherhood with each other with joy. The same thing has happened to these youths: they have been struck by a person’s words and have encountered a community that has taken them in and welcomed them. During the party, he spoke to each of them with great interest, asking about their parents, their lives in Italy, and their studies.
Deana, San Benedetto del Tronto